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Synopsis:
Maduro is arresting the owners of businesses and seizing their businesses because he blames the business owners for causing the shortages in order to make the government look bad.

Shades of Joe Stalin and the "Wreckers' in the 1930's.....

__________________Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

Maduro and his buddies are obviously pocketing the oil money for themselves. There is really no excuse for a country that pumps so much oil to not be able to provide for their people.

Originally Posted by dudalb

I don't know if they have enough brains to sucessful pocket money for themselves. They seem to more on the level of True Believers in a ideology that just does not work.

Originally Posted by petrov2500

Surely the oil money must be going somewhere?

I think dudalb is more or less correct here. Not that there isn't corruption, but that isn't the main problem with Venezuela. For one thing, they practically give away gasoline to Venezuelan citizens, at much less than the cost production. They also give oil to countries like Cuba or sell it to them at bargain prices below what it would fetch on the international market.

Quote:

Venezuela famously enjoys the cheapest gas in the world: At around 5 cents a gallon, Venezuelans can typically fill up their cars for less than $1

. . .

Venezuela also sells hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to its neighbors in the region at heavy discounts.

These things cost money, obviously. I'm no expert in how much it costs to produce gasoline, but I'm pretty sure that it's more than 5 cents per gallon. So they lose money by doing this, and it's not clear why a government would do that if their only concern was to line their own pockets.

__________________A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — National police in camouflage uniforms smashed into the office of Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma on Thursday and carried the opposition figure away. President Nicolas Maduro announced that the mayor would be punished for all his efforts to disturb the peace.

Reports of the arrest set off protests around the city, where people spontaneously banged pots from their windows or tapped rhythms on their car horns amid rush hour traffic. As night fell, hundreds gathered in front of the headquarters of the intelligence service police to vent their anger.

In a speech Thursday night, Maduro said the mayor had been "captured" and would face justice.

"He'll be held accountable for all his crimes," Maduro said in comments that TV and radio stations across the country were required to carry.

Last week, Maduro named Ledezma among a laundry list of government critics and Western powers he accused of plotting a coup to bring down the South American country's socialist government, one of more than a dozen such denunciations Maduro has made since taking power in 2013. Ledezma mocked the accusation in multiple interviews, saying the real destabilizing force in Venezuela was the government's corruption.

__________________A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

DC has been AWOL since shortly before the Forums changes ownership.
I wonder if he is now aware of what a fool he made of himself with his blind worship of Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution, and for that reason is reluctant to return.

__________________Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

DC has been AWOL since shortly before the Forums changes ownership.
I wonder if he is now aware of what a fool he made of himself with his blind worship of Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution, and for that reason is reluctant to return.

DC has been AWOL since shortly before the Forums changes ownership.
I wonder if he is now aware of what a fool he made of himself with his blind worship of Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution, and for that reason is reluctant to return.

He's banned which is why I'm not worried about expressing my doubt of his honesty in abandoning his support of trutherism.

Agreed. IIRC, he came as a truther and completely changed his views. It's always fun to see someone turn the corner.

Problem was he just found other brands of nonsense to replace his trutherism.
I note that it was after he gave up Trutherism he begun his blind worship of Hugo Chavez and the whole "Bolivarian" revolution.

__________________Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

Protests have exploded across Venezuela in recent days as citizens gather to demonstrate against the government's heavy-handed police tactics, its crackdown on political dissent, and the economic woes that have led to inflation and shortages of basic goods. These photos show just how large those protests have become — and the scale of the government crackdown they provoked, which this week led to the death of a 14-year-old boy during an anti-government rally.

The February 19 arrest of a popular opposition politician inflamed the protests

President Maduro now has only a 20 percent approval rating, and has responded with a series of harsh crackdowns on political dissent, including arrests of opposition politicians. Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, a prominent critic of President Nicolás Maduro, was arrested on February 19 on charges of plotting an American-backed coup against the government. His detention sparked another round of major demonstrations in Caracas, adding to the unrest that has been increasing since early 2014.

Police shot and killed a 14-year-old boy on Tuesday, sparking further protests

Protests have flared again this week after 14-year-old Kluiverth Roa was shot dead by police during an anti-government rally on Tuesday in the city of San Cristobal. Demonstrators gathered in Caracas and elsewhere to protest Roa's death, though the worst unrest was in San Cristobal, where protesters gathered at Roa's public funeral.

__________________A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 8,527

Originally Posted by WildCat

And it's been quite a while since the apologists for the Great Bolivarian Revolution have posted here.

Who those would be?

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

Use the search engine to look up threads on Chavez/Venezuela; you will see how in the Good Old Days before the house of cards started to collapse there were plenty of fanboys for the "Bolivarian Revolution" here.

__________________Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 8,527

Well, certainly I would hope the House of Cards to stand until at least its fourth season (by February 2016) in order to have our soon former president fleeing and being given asylum in Venezuela. Otherwise there's a certain risk of self coup d'état (autogolpe) as she may find Venezuela the only comfortable way to avoid incarceration. Let's Pope Francis Underwood to mediate.

So, long live to the Venezuelan Indigenism, in Socialist disguise, led by its whitish führers and inspired by bird-like ghosts, as it might be the only hope for half a dozen countries to sweep out their political filth.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

Well, certainly I would hope the House of Cards to stand until at least its fourth season (by February 2016) in order to have our soon former president fleeing and being given asylum in Venezuela. Otherwise there's a certain risk of self coup d'état (autogolpe) as she may find Venezuela the only comfortable way to avoid incarceration. Let's Pope Francis Underwood to mediate.

So, long live to the Venezuelan Indigenism, in Socialist disguise, led by its whitish führers and inspired by bird-like ghosts, as it might be the only hope for half a dozen countries to sweep out their political filth.

That makes no sense whatsoever.

__________________Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty.

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 8,527

Originally Posted by dudalb

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Then it suits the thread...

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

There were apologists here trying to justify jailing news media opposition because, you know, they were funding attempts to overthrow him.

Even if true in every case, that's just a legal issue (like Saddam's defense team claiming he gets to execute people trying to overthrow him because statecraft) and is not ethically justifiable, as it is perfectly ok to seek to overthrow a dictator, even a populistly-elected one.

Well, certainly I would hope the House of Cards to stand until at least its fourth season (by February 2016) in order to have our soon former president fleeing and being given asylum in Venezuela. Otherwise there's a certain risk of self coup d'état (autogolpe) as she may find Venezuela the only comfortable way to avoid incarceration. Let's Pope Francis Underwood to mediate.

So, long live to the Venezuelan Indigenism, in Socialist disguise, led by its whitish führers and inspired by bird-like ghosts, as it might be the only hope for half a dozen countries to sweep out their political filth.

I guess things aren't turning out as you hoped.

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

Then it suits the thread...

What, specifically (outside of your silly pomposity), doesn't make sense in this thread?

__________________"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." -- Mahatma Gandhi

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 8,527

Originally Posted by trustbutverify

I guess things aren't turning out as you hoped.

On the contrary: it is happening almost exactly as I expected it to be (except for the opportunity and value oil reached)

Originally Posted by trustbutverify

What, specifically (outside of your silly pomposity), doesn't make sense in this thread?

C'mon! This whole thread is about pomposity: participants, many of them just cold war cultural leftovers, departing from pieces of news took at random and doing the written equivalent of mouthing and being opinionated about what they don't know, don't care to know and wouldn't be able to know.

My paragraph -which you qualify as a product of silly pomposity- is designed in the same way of the "Sally, squirrels, obscene calls and neon signs" example used to explain what an integrating factor is -in cognitive science, not mathematics-. It means: if you know a bit about contemporary Venezuela and Latin American politics and culture, you got it, whatever your ideological stance. If you don't, it sounds unarticulated.

Any time you read something "pompous" from mine it'll mean I'm saying "you don't get it and, worse, you seem to be structurally unable to get it".

Antidemocratic regimes take part of their strength from the dynamics of hate. And what has been said here in the Venezuelan/Chavez threads only would strengthen that hate, favouring the antidemocratic field, if they weren't so unimportant in real life.

Anyway these threads are important within the microcosm of these fora and deserve a sceptical approach.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

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